Review: BlackBerry 10 is better, much better, late than never

From Gestures to the Hub, BlackBerry 10 has won us over. But is it too late?

Late last year, Samsung was the number one handset manufacturer on the Android side. Samsung and Apple accounted for 50 percent of the world's handset market share. BlackBerry, once the go-to business phone for just about every major company in the world, seemed to be tottering around on its last leg. As the company lost most of the world's smartphone market share, many looked BlackBerry's way and wondered what the Canada-based corporation was going to do to save itself.

After a year of speculation, leaks, and promises, BlackBerry provided its answer. The company unwrapped and released BlackBerry 10, the smartphone operating system on which it's betting the farm. While we were fortunate enough to have a first look at the gesture-based operating system during CES 2013, we walked away with a bit of trepidation. Those fancy gestures weren't working too great for us when we poked around during our half hour with developer-assigned handsets. It wasn't because of the prerelease hardware either—we were mostly perplexed at the idea that "gestures" and "a unified inbox" were the two game-changing features on which BlackBerry was wagering the company's future. Can BlackBerry 10 actually win users back to its platform with these particular elements, or will consumers just see them as gimmicks?

Andrew Cunningham has already written his review of the touchscreen-only BlackBerry Z10 handset, but that review focused on just the hardware. We wanted to spend some additional time using the BlackBerry 10 operating system, so that we could dive in deeply and give this new operating environment the review it deserves. Fortunately, there's more to BlackBerry 10 than a few gestures and a new inbox view. There have been plenty of questions asked, so we'll try to get through all of them. Really, we think you'll like what you see.

Gestures: A new way of life

Enlarge/ A handy cheat sheet for BlackBerry 10's gestures is featured within the Settings app.

Gestures are ingrained in everything the user does in BlackBerry 10 because the flagship hardware, the Z10, has no hardware navigation buttons. At first, moving around is confusing—the tutorial is frustrating, and the BlackBerry "flow" is very different from what we've grown accustomed to in other mobile operating systems. We've been so used to using buttons to go back a page or jump to the home screen that we went into this experience with hesitation.

BlackBerry 10 features four main gestures for navigation. The first and most important gesture is the quick swipe up from the bottom edge of the bezel, which brings users back to the home screen (a longer, steadier finger swipe from the middle of the screen will scroll the view). Swiping down from the top of the bezel will summon the Quick Settings pull-down shade from the home screen, or an options shade in other applications which support the gesture. Within any application, the upside-down J-hook—beginning from the bottom of the bezel and gesturing upward to the right—allows you to peek at the notifications and messages awaiting you in the BlackBerry Hub. (Left-handed people will have to hook the J the same way as right-handed people do, as there is no option for reversing the gestures.) Lastly, swiping from left to right scrolls through each screen, much like how the mechanism works on iOS and Android devices. With these four gestures mastered, the BlackBerry 10 experience becomes much more user friendly.

After about an hour of setting up accounts and then swiping to and fro, the gestures begin to feel second-nature. If you get lost in the beginning, there is always a cheat sheet (pictured above) neatly tucked away within the Setup app to replay the tutorials. New users and returning BlackBerry faithful can take comfort in the fact that they won't simply be tossed into the new gesture soup. While the full-on embrace of gestures may seem like a big shift from the traditional keyboard and touchscreen setup, BlackBerry has successfully figured out a way to take the gestures introduced in the PlayBook tablet and bring them to its next generation of handsets. (As an aside, only the swipe up from the bottom of the bezel has been lifted directly from the PlayBook.)

Of course, we can't push aside one fact: it really does take some time to acclimate your thumb to the general flow of the interface. At our first look at the operating system, PlayBook Product Manager Michael Clewley mentioned the philosophy of BlackBerry 10 was to “[flow] without having to think about it.” After more than half an hour with it, this philosophy made more sense. The only notable issue we could foresee with gestures is what might happen when the phone is handed off to a non-BlackBerry user. We passed the phone around to a few good friends, most of them iOS users and one a Windows Phone evangelist. No surprise, they were confused about how to get around the screens. If you really need a friend or spouse to help you multitask from time to time, consider giving them some prep time with the tutorial beforehand.

Multitasking

Enlarge/ The handy running apps screen, also sometimes referred to as the Home screen.

Swiping up from the bottom of the bezel brings you to BlackBerry 10's running apps screen. This area serves as a multi-functional screen for the operating system: it acts as BlackBerry 10's application switcher and task killer, which requires a quick tap on the “X” at the lower right of a given app. Some apps offer widget-like functionality. For example, the Pictures app cycles through the photo album like a miniature slideshow, while the Calendar app shows upcoming meetings and events. You can have up to eight actively running applications, arranged in a pair of 4x4 grids that you can swipe between. Tapping an app's tile then brings it to the foreground. There is also no way to permanently “pin” applications to the running apps screen, as they are cycled out with each newly launched application. However, the most-accessed ones will remain on the running apps screen.

Enlarge/ The BlackBerry World screen acts like a widget on the running apps screen by cycling through featured content.

What's nice about this method is its ease of use. Unlike Android or iOS, it doesn't require pressing a button to bring up all of the open applications or double tapping a home button—all it takes is a simple gesture. You can also quickly kill any application that's not in use, and you can get a quick glance at what is going on in the background.

The Hub: It’s everywhere you want to be

Enlarge/ J-hook or swipe over to the Hub to get a look at all of your notifications from around the Web.

The Hub is more than just a notifications center; it lets users check on all of their social and e-mail accounts in one place without having to launch a whole mess of applications. E-mail, Twitter, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), Facebook, LinkedIn, voicemails, missed calls, and system updates are all lumped on this one page. All it takes to access it is a swipe to the right from the home screen or a J-hook from the lock screen or any other application. Any time you receive a notification for any service, the corresponding icon will shine a bright red asterisk.

Having one unified inbox can feel overwhelming at first, especially if you're trying to manage a bunch of accounts at once—but it's actually quite handy. It's easier to do an at-a-glance check of all of your accounts without having to sift through icon badges, and it's instantly accessible with that J-hook gesture. If it all becomes a bit of a mess, users can simply swipe to the right to sort through messages and notifications by service. Of course, this does mean you have to leave whatever application you're currently in to check what a friend has written on your wall.

Enlarge/ You can add various accounts to the Hub, including all of the major social networks and Evernote.

Enlarge/ Tweak the settings of the Hub so you don't have to see what you don't want.

For the business-centric user—the one that BlackBerry has always held as its core audience—the unified inbox makes sense. Those who use Facebook for marketing and social correspondence, Twitter and LinkedIn for networking, and several e-mail accounts for communicating need to have everything one place. Frankly, even the trigger-happy teenager might find this suits his or her social-centric lifestyle.

All services are properly integrated into the Hub, too—it's not just for marking things as read. Direct messages and Twitter replies can be easily sent from within, and LinkedIn networking requests can be accepted or declined with one touch. You can accept Facebook event invitations or navigate to individual profiles of newly accepted friend requests, send e-mails, or compose BBMs and text messages. Furthermore, you can also start a video chat with another BBM user and enable screen sharing once the connection is made.

Enlarge/ Associate Writer Andrew Cunningham and I engage in a BBM video chat.

Enlarge/ Screen sharing was surprisingly smooth, with no stutter or buffer to speak of.

As an added bonus, BlackBerry allows developers to decide whether or not they want to integrate notifications within BlackBerry Hub.

163 Reader Comments

This looks like an awesome Hail Mary by RIM. The problem is, while my office does have BES, I have to decide on getting this or the Galaxy Note 2 or S3. I fear this is history repeating itself a la Palm.

Doesn't it?! Regardless of anything else, BlackBerry (the company) has pulled off something really grand here, given just how tiny and isolated they are compared to Microsoft, Google, or Apple. I have no horse in the BlackBerry race (never owned one or worked for a company that used BES, and can only think of one friend who still has a BB), so I really have no idea if what's presented here is enough for them to claw their way back, but I find myself wanting to stand and applaud if only because they actually did it -- turned the company on a dime and created what appears to be a modern, performant, and in some ways innovative mobile operating system. Neat!

This looks like an awesome Hail Mary by RIM. The problem is, while my office does have BES, I have to decide on getting this or the Galaxy Note 2 or S3. I fear this is history repeating itself a la Palm.

However, unlike Palm, there aren't any manufacturers who wanted to buy a BBOS license when they mentioned selling it last year.

I feel for them, I really do, but I'll be honest and say that I'm underwhelmed, based on this review. Maybe actually getting some hands-on time with the Z10 will change my mind, but for now, I'm thinking 'too little, too late.'

This looks like an awesome Hail Mary by RIM. The problem is, while my office does have BES, I have to decide on getting this or the Galaxy Note 2 or S3. I fear this is history repeating itself a la Palm.

We have BES where I work as well. My BB torch is getting long in the tooth but at the moment we're phasing out BB in favor of iPhones as BB was late getting anything shiny into management's hands. Hopefully I can squeak this phone in, as it looks like exactly what I need for a corporate phone.

The gestures don't seem as complex as previously suggested. No more than WebOS, and in fact several are the same. (Swipe up from the bezel to get to the home screen, and swipe down from the bezel to open settings.) It sounded like there were many more.

Something I haven't heard much about is the openness of BB10 and also of Windows Phone. Are these locked-down systems or is there room to experiment?

Now that RIM (err BlackBerry, sorry!) is back in the mix, I'd like to see a roundup of the major mobile operating systems comparing the big feature sets that each vendor has to provide for their users.

That said, BlackBerry still has to mold its product for its two huge core audiences: the business-oriented multi-tasker and the developing smartphone markets.

The problem is, price is a huge factor in emerging markets (probably the driving factor), and BlackBerry's phones seriously fail in that regard. They lost one of their huge core audiences when they announced a price of $200 on contract. Android dominates in emerging markets precisely because there are phones at all kinds of price points. If BlackBerry were really serious about emerging markets, they would have delivered a lower-end phone in addition to what they announced.

Interesting. For someone like me who has avoided phone lock-in by keeping data in the cloud and using device-agnostic web access, this looks like a very compelling phone.

It certain makes for a harder decision when the time comes for my subsidized phone upgrade this year. A richer market of competitive offerings is a good thing, and I would hate to see the market degenerate (even more) to a two horse race.

That "bright red asterisk" is probably really great if you're not colorblind. Once again software developers punt on 1/8 of the male population.Seriously, looking at that screenshot I didn't notice the asterisks until I read the caption.

Gesture navigation is what is innovative? Well, my wife's Nokia N9 running Meego (she bought it in 2011) works only with gestures. And it is much simpler than the BB10 sounds. You close applications by a short swipe from top to bottom and the application manager and notification center are accessed the same way as other apps, by swiping left (if IRC the notification center is always the first app on a left swipe) or right.

Considering all the hardcore Crackberry users and the scads of business level users still out there (Both my company which is a MAJOR corp and the DoD still use em), I think this is coming just in time and not too late. This may have well just saved RIMs ass in the nick of time.

Especially from a business standpoint where RIM has a long standing reputation as a business class provider both in security and functionality. Whereas iOS and more so Android are still struggling to break into.

I'm well and truly impressed by BBOS 10. I love me some Windows Phone, but assuming BB is around in a year, I might have to seriously do a side-by-side of Windows Phone and BlackBerry when I am up for another phone.

That "bright red asterisk" is probably really great if you're not colorblind. Once again software developers punt on 1/8 of the male population.Seriously, looking at that screenshot I didn't notice the asterisks until I read the caption.

1/8 of the male population is color blind? Do you have a source for that data? I find it hard to believe that 375 million men in the world are color blind.

Blackberry might still have a chance. This is much better than I thought it could be. Hopefully Apple doesn't declare "thermonuclear war" and kill it with patent litigation though... Not sure what the risks levels of that are.

That "bright red asterisk" is probably really great if you're not colorblind. Once again software developers punt on 1/8 of the male population.Seriously, looking at that screenshot I didn't notice the asterisks until I read the caption.

But is this really a color-blind issue? I didn't even notice the asterisks at first glance, and I'm not color blind.

The problem (to me) doesn't seem to be the color so much as the size, since they appear as decorations on a white icon.

That "bright red asterisk" is probably really great if you're not colorblind. Once again software developers punt on 1/8 of the male population.Seriously, looking at that screenshot I didn't notice the asterisks until I read the caption.

1/8 of the male population is color blind? Do you have a source for that data? I find it hard to believe that 375 million men in the world are color blind.

That "bright red asterisk" is probably really great if you're not colorblind. Once again software developers punt on 1/8 of the male population.Seriously, looking at that screenshot I didn't notice the asterisks until I read the caption.

1/8 of the male population is color blind? Do you have a source for that data? I find it hard to believe that 375 million men in the world are color blind.

That "bright red asterisk" is probably really great if you're not colorblind. Once again software developers punt on 1/8 of the male population.Seriously, looking at that screenshot I didn't notice the asterisks until I read the caption.

1/8 of the male population is color blind? Do you have a source for that data? I find it hard to believe that 375 million men in the world are color blind.

That "bright red asterisk" is probably really great if you're not colorblind. Once again software developers punt on 1/8 of the male population.Seriously, looking at that screenshot I didn't notice the asterisks until I read the caption.

1/8 of the male population is color blind? Do you have a source for that data? I find it hard to believe that 375 million men in the world are color blind.

It's more like 1%.

That is a more reasonable number, but according to the CDC (link: http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2008/Jul/pdf/07_0077.pdf), 8% of males and 0.5% of women in the US suffer from a type of color blindness. Seems that color blindness is related to the X gene, so easier to men to suffer from it.

I've been tracking BB10 for a little while. While I'm quite happy with Windows Phone 8 on my Lumia 920 and have no plans to switch, I'd have no qualms with jumping ship to BB10. It's very slick. It just needs the apps. The question remains: Could there be room for 4 smartphone ecosystems?

That "bright red asterisk" is probably really great if you're not colorblind. Once again software developers punt on 1/8 of the male population.Seriously, looking at that screenshot I didn't notice the asterisks until I read the caption.

1/8 of the male population is color blind? Do you have a source for that data? I find it hard to believe that 375 million men in the world are color blind.

Even the 1/10 in number is somewhat misleading, as there are various levels of severity (not to mention different forms, though deuteranopia (red/green) is the most common.

Well, I got interested in the topic and did some research, it appear that 8% of males and 0.5% of women in the US suffer from a form of color blindness. Seems that color blindness is related to the X gene, so easier to men to suffer from it, according to the CDC (link: http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2008/Jul/pdf/07_0077.pdf).

Quote:

Regardless, I test our designs at Ars against color blindness simulation software. No reason a company as big as BB shouldn't do the same.

It's definitely enough that UI designers need to be aware of it, no question. If anyone is curious here's what the Ars front page looks like through a red/green color blindness simulator:

If you're not color blind you probably don't think about it, but as you can see it has a real effect on how you see everything, not just stoplights or other easy examples. (I'm not color blind for the record, just conscious of it after talking to our readers.)

The gestures don't seem as complex as previously suggested. No more than WebOS, and in fact several are the same. (Swipe up from the bezel to get to the home screen, and swipe down from the bezel to open settings.) It sounded like there were many more.

Something I haven't heard much about is the openness of BB10 and also of Windows Phone. Are these locked-down systems or is there room to experiment?

For me, the gripe isn't that the gestures are complex, but that they aren't particularly discoverable, and they're pretty different compared to the "mainstream" phones offered by Apple and Samsung and etc. You get used to them after a few days with the phone, but that doesn't help them out if you're in a store taking a demo phone for a spin. It's not an insurmountable obstacle or anything, but BB needs all the help it can get at the moment.

1) Another gesture that comes from the PlayBook is the swipe down from the top to open an Application's settings2) I'm pretty sure BlackBerry named its Voice Assistant "VIKI" --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Z6nkDiEdE

I'm curious Florence, if you are playing music and you hold the Volume Up or Volume Down key, does it skip to the next/previous song? That's long been a feature of BlackBerry phones that I love (seriously miss this feature) and is often not talked about. Even the all-might iPhone, which from it's iPod-esque roots (considered one of the greatest music players of all time) doesn't do this.

I've been tracking BB10 for a little while. While I'm quite happy with Windows Phone 8 on my Lumia 920 and have no plans to switch, I'd have no qualms with jumping ship to BB10. It's very slick. It just needs the apps. The question remains: Could there be room for 4 smartphone ecosystems?

Of course there is. There is always room for competition, which this will bring. And in the end, the consumers will be the winners with more choices and (hopefully) cheaper devices.

I've been tracking BB10 for a little while. While I'm quite happy with Windows Phone 8 on my Lumia 920 and have no plans to switch, I'd have no qualms with jumping ship to BB10. It's very slick. It just needs the apps. The question remains: Could there be room for 4 smartphone ecosystems?

Well, I don't see why not. Not all companies need to have 50% of the market to be profitable and provide top notch service (of course, stock market analyst may disagree with me). I think the market has space for 4 big players, having around 15-25% market share for each and maybe some smaller players with less market share, but that provide more niche options (maybe ubuntu, firefox OS and others). Would be a great scenario for consumers.

I've been tracking BB10 for a little while. While I'm quite happy with Windows Phone 8 on my Lumia 920 and have no plans to switch, I'd have no qualms with jumping ship to BB10. It's very slick. It just needs the apps. The question remains: Could there be room for 4 smartphone ecosystems?

Of course there is. There is always room for competition, which this will bring. And in the end, the consumers will be the winners with more choices and (hopefully) cheaper devices.

That wasn't true of the video game console market. There has only ever been room for 3 there. The 4th place console can't cover costs.

About the "red action" symbol and colour blindness, my guess is BlackBerry never checked for it and since its been a "red action" symbol for... forever (as far as I can remember) they wouldn't want to change it now.

Curiously, my co-worker who is colour blind has never complained about not noticing it....

I've been tracking BB10 for a little while. While I'm quite happy with Windows Phone 8 on my Lumia 920 and have no plans to switch, I'd have no qualms with jumping ship to BB10. It's very slick. It just needs the apps. The question remains: Could there be room for 4 smartphone ecosystems?

Of course there is. There is always room for competition, which this will bring. And in the end, the consumers will be the winners with more choices and (hopefully) cheaper devices.

That wasn't true of the video game console market. There has only ever been room for 3 there. The 4th place console can't cover costs.

Console market is different from mobile OS market. The console market is much more restrictive (cost wise) that the mobile OS one.

I've been tracking BB10 for a little while. While I'm quite happy with Windows Phone 8 on my Lumia 920 and have no plans to switch, I'd have no qualms with jumping ship to BB10. It's very slick. It just needs the apps. The question remains: Could there be room for 4 smartphone ecosystems?

Of course there is. There is always room for competition, which this will bring. And in the end, the consumers will be the winners with more choices and (hopefully) cheaper devices.

That wasn't true of the video game console market. There has only ever been room for 3 there. The 4th place console can't cover costs.

Console market is different from mobile OS market. The console market is much more restrictive (cost wise) that the mobile OS one.

Plus, RIM already has a market share. It's not like they are a brand new developer just breaking into the mobile OS market. And that market share may not be large, but they can leverage their enterprise business side and grow the public market side with the new devices.

Well done Ars. This is a well written article!I am impressed at what BB has pulled out of the hat - they appear to have learned the right lessons and improved the overall useability experience. I would suggest that Android (and more so Apple) could learn a thing or two from BB.My first thought when reading this article was that Apple and IOS have stagnated for too long. This may be the jolt that we IOS users have been looking for (eg. 'wifi toggle in notifications' as one of many examples).

What about reboot speed and performance degradation over time? I can attest to those being some of the more annoying "features" of BBOS Classic. That and having to reboot everytime an application is removed.

Can you open up music and other files directly from the file browser? Is universal search still available?

Florence Ion / Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.